by Lee Child
‘And do what?’
‘We need to think strictly for ourselves. There may be orders we need to ignore.’
She looked away and said nothing, but then eventually she nodded, in a way that could have been deeply contemplative, or ruefully determined, or somewhere in between. It was hard to tell.
I said, ‘Still feeling good?’
She said, ‘We have to do it anyway.’
‘Not what I asked.’
‘Should I still be feeling good?’
‘No need to feel anxious, anyway. Not about which agency will betray you, and which won’t. Because they all will, sooner or later.’
‘That’s really going to cheer me up.’
‘I’m not trying to cheer you up. I’m trying to get us on the same wavelength. Which is where we need to be.’
‘No one is going to betray us.’
‘You would bet your life on them?’
‘Some of the people I know, yes.’
‘But not all of them.’
‘No.’
‘Same thing.’
She said, ‘Which bothers you.’
I said, ‘Which bothers you more.’
‘Shouldn’t it?’
‘You know what your biggest mistake was?’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘You should have joined the army, not the CIA.’
‘Why?’
‘Because this whole stress thing you’ve got going on is because you think national security is on your shoulders alone. Which is an unreasonable burden. But you think it because you don’t trust your colleagues. Not all of them. You don’t believe in them. Which leaves you isolated. It’s all down to you. But the army is different. Whatever else is wrong with it, you can trust your brother soldiers. And believe in them. That’s all there is. You’d have been much happier.’
She was quiet for a beat, and then she said, ‘I went to Yale.’
‘You could switch right now. I’ll take you to the recruiting office.’
‘Right now we’re in London. Waiting for a text from Mr Bennett.’
‘When we get back. You should think about it.’
She said, ‘Maybe I will.’
The text from Bennett came through two hours later. I was alone in my own room, which was the same as Nice’s, but on a higher floor, and facing in the opposite direction. My view was of Mayfair’s prosperous rooftops, all grey slate and red tile and ornate chimneys. The American Embassy was close by, somewhere just north of me, but I couldn’t see it. I was on the bed, and my phone was charging on the night stand, and it buzzed once and the screen lit up: Lobby 10 minutes. I called Nice on the house phone, and she said she had gotten the same message, so I lay back down for five more minutes, and then I put my reloaded Glock in my coat pocket, and I headed out to the elevator.
Nice was already in the lobby, and Bennett was already in a car at the door. The car was a local General Motors product, called a Vauxhall, new and washed, midnight blue, so completely anonymous it could only be a law enforcement car. I guessed the Skoda had already been wiped and dumped, or set on fire. It was early in the evening, and the sun was very low over the park.
I got in the back seat, and Nice sat up front next to Bennett, who hit the gas and launched out into the traffic. I asked him, ‘Where are we going?’
He didn’t answer for a long moment, because he had to get off Park Lane heading south and back on Park Lane heading north, which because of construction involved a high-speed 360 all the way around Hyde Park Corner, which was a hub just as crazy as the Place de la Bastille. Then he said, ‘Chigwell.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The next place north and west of Romford. Where you go when you get a little money. Some of it is very suburban. Big houses, and plenty of space between them. Walls, and gates, and things like that. Some trees, and open spaces.’
‘And Little Joey lives there?’
‘In a house of his own design.’
We saw plenty of houses and plenty of designs before we saw Joey’s. The trip was slow. Traffic was bad, because we were heading basically out of town, along with about a million other people trying to get home. Every light and every corner had a traffic jam. But Bennett didn’t seem worried about time. I guessed he was happy to wait for the sun to go down.
We made it through some historic districts, and then out into the further reaches, heading always a little east of north. We drove a short stretch on a motorway, one ramp to the next, and then we were in Chigwell, and we soon saw streets that would have melted the iciest heart, with the setting sun golden behind them, with substantial houses all in glowing red brick, some with iron fences, or walls and gates, like miniature Wallace Courts, most with trees and shrubberies, all with expensive late-model automobiles on their driveways, their chrome ornaments flashing bright wherever the sun escaped the shadows.
I said, ‘Are we driving right up to his door?’
Bennett said, ‘No, it’s a lot more complicated than that.’
And it was, at least geographically. We parked the car in a lot made of crushed grit, behind a pub, but we didn’t enter the establishment. We walked right by it. Maybe there was an arrangement with the owner. Nothing said, nothing asked, nothing offered, but a clear understanding all the same. Don’t call the tow truck, and don’t ask questions. Then we made a left and a right through leafy streets, no doubt closely observed from behind lace curtains, but the British are cautious people, and we fell squarely on the right side of the benefit of the doubt. Just three random people, taking a stroll. We watched the sun go down, finally, and the sky went dark, and we passed a long board fence, and then just before another started up there was a yard-wide gap, which was the entrance to some kind of a public footpath, long and straight and narrow, with trodden-down weeds and a meagre scattering of black grit underfoot, and high board fences either side, exactly a yard apart all the way. We walked single file, Bennett first, then Nice, then me, a hundred and fifty paces, until we came out in a grit clearing with a green garden shed in it, which was recently painted, with two words over the door picked out in white: Bowling Club. Behind it was an immense square of perfect lawn.
‘Different kind of bowling,’ Nice said.
‘Very popular sport,’ Bennett said.
‘Hence the enormous clubhouse,’ I said. ‘But I guess they need to accommodate everyone at once. That would explain it. For the grudge matches.’
‘There are many other clubs,’ Bennett said. ‘All of them larger.’
He bent down and took out a key from under a stone. The key looked freshly cut. He put it in the door. He had to jiggle it a little. But he got the job done. The door swung inward, and I saw gloom inside, and caught a musty smell, of wood and wool and cotton and leather, all stored too long in damp conditions. He held the door with spread fingers and used the other hand to motion us through.
I said, ‘What’s in there?’
He said, ‘Check it out.’
What was in there was a whole lot of bowling club stuff, but it was all piled to one side, leaving a clear lane in front of the windows, which looked out over the immaculate grass. Neatly spaced in the clear lane were three kitchen stools, each one set out behind a pair of huge night-vision binoculars, each pair mounted on a sturdy three-legged frame.
Bennett said, ‘We had gales last winter. Nothing very serious, but one fellow lost a panel out of his fence, and another lost a twenty-foot conifer. Which by chance opened up a direct line of sight from this shed to Little Joey’s house. Which was lucky, because we can’t get any closer. We assume his immediate neighbours are either working for him or loyal to him or scared of him.’
‘So this little shed is surveillance HQ for Joey?’
‘You get what you get.’
‘You sit for hours with your back to the door?’
‘Take it up with whichever carpenter died fifty years ago.’
‘With the key under a rock?’
‘
It’s a budget issue. It’s the sort of thing they suggest. Why not share a key instead of cutting ten? So they can buy a new computer.’
‘No video?’
‘That kind of thing, they like to spend money on. Wireless upload straight out of the binoculars. All day and all night. High definition, but monochrome.’
‘Does the bowling club know you’re here?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Good,’ I said. I figured swearing a busybody committee chairman to silence was like taking out an ad in the newspaper.
Nice said, ‘Suppose they come in to play a game of bowls?’
Bennett said, ‘We changed the lock. That one is ours, not theirs. They’ll think there’s something wrong with their keys. They’ll call a meeting. They’ll vote on whether to spend club funds on a locksmith. They’ll make speeches for and against. By which time either it won’t matter any more, or we’ll have changed the lock back again and gone home happy.’
I said, ‘How well can we see from here?’
He said, ‘Take a look.’
So I shuffled in, and sat down on the middle stool, and took a look.
THIRTY-EIGHT
CLEARLY THE BINOCULARS had some kind of fantastic high technology in them, because the image was spectacular. Not all green and grainy like I was used to, but liquid and silvery and endlessly precise. I was looking at a house about four hundred yards away, at an angle of about forty-five degrees. I could see the front, and all of one side, in large segments, through the bays of an iron fence, which was built on a brick knee-wall, and divided into sections by occasional brick pillars. The effect was reasonably grand, and I was sure the expenditure had been saner than the lunatic scheme at Wallace Court.
The house itself was a large, solid thing, made of brick, made to look Georgian or Palladian or whatever other kind of a symmetrical style was currently in vogue. It was completely conventional. It had a roof, and windows, and doors, in the right numbers, in all the right places. It was like a kid had been given paper and crayons and told to draw a house. Good, now add more rooms. It had an in-and-out driveway, in through one electric gate and out the other. The driveway was made of blocks that looked silvery but might have been brick-coloured. There was a small black sports car crouched near the door, parked at an angle, as if it had arrived in a hurry.
I sat back.
I said, ‘That’s Little Joey’s house?’
Bennett said, ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Great line of sight.’
‘We got lucky.’
‘He designed it himself?’
‘One of his many talents.’
‘It looks like every other house.’
Bennett said, ‘Guess again.’
I sat forward. I took a second look. Roof tiles, bricks, windows, doors, rainwater gutters, all arranged in a boxy rectangular structure filling most of its lot. I said, ‘What am I looking for?’
Bennett said, ‘Start with the Bentley.’
‘I don’t see it.’
‘It’s right there by the door.’
‘No, that’s something else. It’s much smaller than the Bentley.’
‘No, the house is much bigger.’
‘Than a car?’
‘Than a normal house. Little Joey is six feet eleven inches tall. Eight-foot ceilings don’t appeal to him. Regular doorways make him stoop. That house is a normal house, except every dimension on every blueprint was increased by fifty per cent. All in perfect proportion. Like it had swollen up, uniformly. The opposite of a doll’s house. An exact replica, but bigger, not smaller. The doors are more than nine feet high. The ceilings are way up there.’
I looked again, and focused on the car, and forced myself to see it for the size it really was, whereupon the house did exactly what Bennett had said. It swelled up, in perfect proportion. An exact replica, but bigger.
Not a doll’s house. A giant’s house.
I sat back.
I said, ‘What do regular people look like, when they go in and out?’
Bennett said, ‘Like dolls.’
Casey Nice squeezed behind me, and sat on a stool, and took a look for herself.
I said, ‘Tell me what you’ve seen so far.’
Bennett said, ‘First of all remember where we are. We’re right next to the motorway up to East Anglia, and right next to the M25, where we can go either east or west, or we could go the other way, and be lost in the East End ten minutes from now. It’s a plausible centre for operations. That’s why they all check in here. Not just because Joey is a control freak. He came to them. That’s why he built his house here, I’m sure of it. He thinks a good boss is always on top of every detail.’
‘Who have you seen checking in here?’
‘Lots of people. But we can explain them all.’
‘Talk me through it.’
‘We knew something was about to happen, because Joey suddenly doubled his personal guard. At the time we didn’t know why, but now we guess that was when Kott and Carson made their initial contact, before the job in Paris. And now they’re here, as promised, and they need guards of their own, and food, and entertainment, all of which would come through here.’
‘Even if they’re hiding far away?’
‘Far away for Joey Green means the other side of the M25. We’re not talking about the Highlands of Scotland. Thirty minutes from here is the remotest place Joey ever heard of.’
‘But you’re not seeing it?’
Bennett shook his head, no. He said, ‘We would expect a consistent pattern, something extra, laid on top of their normal activity, but we’re not getting it. There are occasional stray vehicles, and we track them as far as we can. We’ve even done computer simulations, based on which way they’re heading. They never go anywhere useful.’
Beside me Casey Nice said, ‘Maybe Kott and Carson went back to France, to wait. Much less vulnerability there, wouldn’t you think? Because we’re looking for them here. Maybe this is a just-in-time thing. Maybe they’re planning a last-minute return. Which would explain what you’re seeing. Or not seeing. People who aren’t actually here at the moment wouldn’t need feeding.’
Bennett said, ‘Why would they risk the lockdown? That would be unprofessional.’
I said, ‘Which Carson isn’t, right?’
‘Is Kott?’
‘Kott would look at the lockdown like he looks at everything else. Distance, wind, elevation. All the data. He wouldn’t risk it, because he couldn’t predict it. Lockdowns are about emotion, not reason. I think Kott has been inside for days.’
‘So do we. But there’s no pattern here. Just the normal comings and goings.’
I said, ‘Is Joey home right now?’
‘Of course he is. His car is outside.’
I sat forward again, and looked. The immense door, dwarfing the car. The townhouse windows, as big as billiard tables. I said, ‘Maybe Kott and Carson are someplace where they don’t need Joey’s guys to bring them food. Maybe they’re ordering out. For pizza, or chicken, or cheeseburgers. Or kebabs. This part of town seems to have plenty of choice. Or maybe they’re both on a diet. And maybe they don’t want hookers.’
‘Kott was in prison fifteen years. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.’
‘Maybe the meditation straightened him out and made him pure of heart.’
‘They’d need guards, come what may. Partly because they need to rest and sleep, but also because Joey likes to put on a show. Four guys at a time, minimum, which is twelve guys a day. They’d rotate through here. No other way of doing it. For briefing, and debriefing. Joey is big on debriefing. The more he knows, the better he feels. Information is king. He’d want to know all their secrets. Might be useful in the future. The Karel Libor thing is going to start a fashion. They’re all going to want their own pet sniper.’
I said, ‘What does Joey do for food?’
‘He’s getting his deliveries as normal.’
‘Does he eat a lot?’
‘T
wice as much as me. He’s twice the size. A van goes around the back to the kitchen. Sometimes twice a day. God forbid a gangster should have to go to the supermarket.’
‘Does he sample his hookers?’
‘He’s been known to give the fresh meat a run-out. But not often. He